Websites…A disagreement

First, I don’t like how he keeps putting down “Design­ers” and “Cre­ative” peo­ple. I am a designer/creative and even I know the dif­fer­ence between print/web (see #6) and I know that the media is vastly dif­fer­ent and needs to be treated as such. That is why I try and find an actual web com­pany and work with them to bridge the gap between design/functionality and to ensure that the user “does” some­thing (See #15).

I agree with #2. That’s a no-brainer.

#7 is so true. Con­tent is KING!

Noth­ing bugs me worse than #10.

I had to relin­quish font down­loads in #9…it never worked well and even the newer “Web Font” solu­tions don’t work all the time. It’s not worth the has­sle for me or the end-viewer.

I know one major web­site I use a lot that could use the info in #12 and #13. Their drop downs are insuf­fi­cient and they have so much info/PDFs online that even when you use the “search” but­ton it doesn’t work right. They need bet­ter drop-downs and a bet­ter indexed site.

I dis­agree with #17, I believe the new HTML5 does video cross plat­form now with­out need­ing flash? Wasn’t that the whole Apple/Adobe fight? I could be wrong…I hire oth­ers for my web cre­ation now…while I han­dle the design aspect.

My old web­site used #18…I learned that the hard way.

Bot­tom line, I think you can marry cre­ativ­ity with functionality/content, it just needs the right set of peo­ple to pull it off. Its rare that I have ever seen a suc­cess­ful major web­site that didn’t use the best of both worlds (designers/web… peeps and even con­tent managers).

He is wrong in #4, of course adobe lis­tens to “design­ers” and a host of other peo­ple. Sorry, but some­one needs to be in charge of uphold­ing the brand and mak­ing sure that any com­mu­ni­ca­tion that is being made con­forms to that…and usu­ally its designers/content managers/marketers that are involved to ensure that.

Also, it’s not that design­ers are try­ing to make a site “pretty”, its that they are try­ing to make some­thing that is aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing to the viewer that:

won’t drive them away from the gar­ish col­ors and font choices the com­pany made,

make sure it upholds the brand and upholds the mission/values of the com­pany, and

uses the tools we have learned from design to shape the view­ers thoughts/projections about the com­pany and product.

That is what we design­ers do. Whether its print, web,or any other media.

The prin­ci­pals of design that we learned, taught us that if we use these col­ors, and these tech­niques and these ele­ments that a per­son will think this way, and if we change it like so, they’ll think that way.

It’s all about mar­ry­ing what they’ll see to, hope­fully, what they’ll feel.

Most times it takes a designer/creative to do that suc­cess­fully. I’m not bash­ing web­mas­ters, but their minds are more analytical/logical, that these kinds of con­cepts can be hard for them to implement.(Although their are those out there that get it and can pull it off).

That is why I always think that when peo­ple are mak­ing a web site, that they should have at least three things:

a con­tent manager;

a graphic designer;

a web coder/web master.

These three will work in tan­gent to ensure that:

their con­tent is king;

the site is pleas­ing to their audi­ence and sub­tly guides them to what the client needs them to do; and

works on cross plat­forms, has no cod­ing issues and “just works”.

There are always other peo­ple that can get involved if needed on a larger project: SEO rpoviders, Art Direc­tors, Mar­keters, eCom­merce man­agers, etc. But for a basic site, those three above should be it…and some­times #1 and #2 is the same per­son. Some­times #2 and #3 is the same per­son, but they need to know their “stuff”.

2 Responses to Websites…A disagreement

So here’s my ques­tion — how would some­one get work as a copy edi­tor for web­sites? (or proof reader) That’s my pet peeve — if a site doesn’t use gram­mar and punc­tion prop­erly, let alone spelling, I won’t buy from it. Part of me has a desire to reach out to sad, sad sites and offer to help them; unfor­tu­nately, all too often, they refuse to see that they have prob­lems. Check out http://www.hillviewfarms.com if you want to see an exam­ple. Love their prod­ucts but I can’t spend much time on the site because it makes my eyes burn.